States Rights Gist

States Rights Gist (3 September 1831-30 November 1864) was a Brigadier General of the Confederate States Army.

Biography
States Gist was born in Union, South Carolina, to Nathaniel Gist and Elizabeth Lewis McDaniel, and was a distant relative to Continental Army general Mordecai Gist. Graduating South Carolina College (now the South Carolina University), he briefly attended Harvard law school but left after a year. In 1853 he became the captain of a company of South Carolina militia and in 1858 his cousin, Governor William Henry Gist, made him his aide-de-camp and a Brigadier General. When South Carolina seceded from the Union in December 1860, Gist was made Inspector General under the new governor, Francis Pickens, and in 1861 he was sent to Virginia in time to fight in the First Battle of Bull Run. Gist was slightly wounded and his commanding officer Barnard E. Bee killed in action, so he took over the 4th Alabama Infantry Regiment. In 1862 he fought in the Siege of Charleston during the Union siege actions and later transferred to Mississippi, where he fought under Joseph E. Johnston during his attempts to relieve Vicksburg. After the failure to relieve Vicksburg Gist fought in Tennessee at the Battle of Chickamauga and in Georgia in the Chattanooga Campaign and Atlanta Campaign.

During the 1864 Franklin-Nashville Campaign Gist fought in the Battle of Franklin. He was shot in the chest while leading a charge against the Union army, dying in the battle along with John H. Kelly, Patrick Cleburne, Otho H. Strahl, Hiram B. Granbury, John C. Carter, and John Adams.